This week is the entire Pirates’ season in a microcosm: on Tuesday night, Jameson Taillon spun a gem against the Mets, shutting them out for eight innings and giving their offense plenty of time to wear Jacob deGrom out to build a lead. It was a great win and it was great because it was […]

During the Stephen Strasburg commotion of 2012, I remember the Braves talking about why they’d waited to put Kris Medlen in the rotation until late July. Medlen, you might recall, went 9-0 in his 12 starts from July 31st on, with a 0.97 ERA and an 84/10 K/BB ratio in 83 2/3 innings, and though […]

For the first time since May 12th, the Pirates don’t have a scheduled baseball game. The Pirates have played 30 times in this month-plus, and they’ve gone 14-16. This stretch started distressingly, with a fifth consecutive loss to the Cubs, and it’s ended horrifically. The Pirates are currently on a six-game losing streak, and they’ve […]

“Helloooooooo,” the blogger shouted from the brink of oblivion. I apologize for my lack of blogging lately, but I’ve hit a critical mass of Things Happening outside of baseball combined with a Pirate team that is really hard to talk about due to an acute case of Cub Poisoning. I had a long drive yesterday […]

A week from now both the NBA and NHL seasons may very well be over and a champion crowned. But as of today, there are games to be played which means you still have a chance to catch some of the action live! Finals tickets never come cheap, but today we’ve got a promo code that […]

The last few days for the Pirates have been relatively non-eventful from the perspective of a team in their situation. They were thoroughly out-dueled by Yu Darvish in his 2016 return on Saturday evening, Francisco Liriano turned in what is an alarmingly characteristic start on Sunday afternoon, and the Pirates smacked the hell out of […]

I said before the game that I thought the Pirates could get to Cole Hamels, but I don’t think that I thought they’d tee off on him the way they did in the fifth inning. They entered the inning with a 1-0 lead thanks to an early Staring Marte homer, and exited the inning with […]

After blasting through the Braves, Rockies, and Diamondbacks over an ten-game homestand, I suspect that the Pirates will face much stiffer competition in Arlington against the Rangers this weekend. The Rangers have a similar record to the Pirates (they’re 27-20), and the rotation has turned so that the Pirates will be starting Jon Niese and […]

For the second start in a row, Gerrit Cole didn’t really pitch his best game against an inferior opponent. After giving up ten hits and a walk without a strikeout in seven one-run innings against the Rockies last week, he walked three Diamondbacks and giving up seven hits in five laborious innings, but he only […]

I think that this particular subgenre of baseball wins is one of my favorites: not the comeback win, but the matter-of-time win. The Diamondbacks gave Rubby de la Rosa a 3-0 lead in the second inning, but the Pirates had runners on base in the first, second, and third without scoring. When Sean Rodriguez hit […]

One of the big mistakes that we, as baseball fans, make (and I’m including myself in this group with a bullet) is assuming that all players develop along a similar pattern. Andrew McCutchen and Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco all came up through the minors as five-tool centerfielders with gap power and very high ceilings, […]

It is, first of all, always nice to see the Pirates sprint out to a big lead against someone and keep it after those two scares against the Rockies and Braves earlier this year. Francisco Liriano’s control was not at its best today, with five walks in 5 2/3 innings, but the Diamondbacks couldn’t do […]

Francisco Liriano has always had a home/road split as a Pirate. This isn’t necessarily surprising; PNC Park is a very friendly park to left-handed pitchers because it’s very unfriendly to right-handed hitters and Liriano fits into it almost like a hand in a glove, with his ground-ball oriented approach and the way he dominates left-handed […]

There is nothing that makes you contemplate your connection to the world quite like an eye injury does. I’m speaking from experience here; when I was 11 I was hit hard in the eyebrow with a line drive and had no idea how bad the injury was until I got to the hospital (I was […]

Yesterday’s rainout had a pretty unfortunate side-effect for the Pirates; their only scheduled off-day between May 13th and June 12th was today, and they will instead play a make-up game against the Rockies at 12:35 (they had another scheduled off-day in this stretch on June 9th, which will also be filled by a makeup game […]

With the Pirates slicing a bit into the Cubs’ NL Central lead this week as we approach the annual “Pirates are good by” date (it’s May 21st, but I think they may have started a few days early this year), all of everyone’s focus has shifted to the Pirates’ passel of Triple-A pitching and when […]

This is how the Pirates/Braves series was supposed to go. Jeff Locke gave the Pirates a nice and easy seven innings, with the Pirate lineup put a perpetually puzzled look on the face of Mike Foltynewicz over his three innings of work. Combined, that let the Pirates sprint out to a 5-0 lead and stay […]

With Jameson Taillon mowing down hitters in Triple-A while starting in tandem with Jeff Locke, June fast approaching, and an obvious date on the calendar for the Pirates to bring a minor league pitcher up (their makeup game against the Rockies has been scheduled in Denver on June 9th between home games against the Mets […]

As much as I’ve enjoyed the Pirate offense scoring a bunch of runs while the Brave defense flails around PNC Park like the 2001 Pirates, I’d love to see Pirate starter actually succeed against the nominal worst offense in baseball. It’d be doubly nice to see that pitcher be Francisco Liriano, who’s struggled quite a […]

In the aftermath of Francisco Cervelli’s extension yesterday, a lot of people all noticed the same thing at the same time. Going around the horn, the Pirates’ contract status looks like this: C- Francisco Cervelli, signed through 2019 1B – John Jaso, signed through 2017 2B – Josh Harrison, signed (including options) through 2020 3B […]